Comcast's 'Watch with Xfinity' button enables better online searches

While 30,000 video choices sounds like couch potato nirvana, finding a program to watch can sometimes turn into an onerous task. Sure, better guides and search engines, including personalization, are on the horizon, but in the meantime, Comcast has come up with a nifty solution for online searches.

Piers Lingle, chief product officer at Comcast Interactive Media, recently wrote about Comcast's "Watch with Xfinity" application on the company's corporate blog. By adding a button to a Web browser toolbar, Watch with Xfinity allows Comcast subscribers to highlight the name of a show or movie when they appear on a website.

Once the show title is highlighted, the JavaScript application checks the Xfinity TV library to see if it's available for viewing online, on linear TV, or on-demand. Watch with Xfinity also lets Comcast digital customers with DVRs set recordings for a show or movie after they're highlighted with a single click. (Go to Comcast's blog to see a demo of how the browser extension works.)

In order to use the application, Comcast customers have to be logged in with their Comcast ID or e-mail address, as well as install the Watch with Xfinity "bookmarklet." The bookmarklet is a Web browser bookmark, but instead of linking to a website, it uses JavaScript.

Coupling Watch with Xfinity with Comcast's iPad Xfinity TV App would pretty much put all of those movies and shows right at the subscribers' fingertips, which in the end means more time watching and less time searching.